Shareholders stood with a group of nuns challenging Sturm Ruger — one of the largest firearms makers in the country — in demanding on Wednesday that the company detail its plans to monitor violence associated with their guns and develop safer products.

At the company’s annual meeting, investors approved a proposal from a coalition of religious women and health care networks that Ruger had for weeks urged investors to reject. The vote came at the first gathering of shareholders for a publicly held American gun maker since 17 people died in a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February — an attack that led to boycotts and rallies for gun control.

Shareholders at the meeting spurned other efforts by gun activists to loosen the company’s ties to the National Rifle Association, and analysts had not expected the request for more transparency to succeed, either.

But the nuns and their allies, members of the shareholder advocacy organization Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, sent representatives to plead their case at the meeting a hotel two hours north of Phoenix.

Now, Ruger must produce a report by February that addresses how it tracks violence associated with its firearms, what kind of research it is conducting related to so-called smart gun technology (such as using thumbprint readers, like those used on smartphones) and its assessment of the risks that gun-related crimes pose to the company’s reputation and finances.

Two years ago, members of the advocacy group, which includes the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary of Marylhurst, Ore., purchased shares in Ruger; American Outdoor Brands, the owner of Smith and Wesson; and Dick’s Sporting Goods, hoping to influence the companies’ attitudes toward gun safety. Their proposal on Wednesday was backed by a majority of shareholders, including the asset manager BlackRock, Ruger’s largest investor.

“The American public will continue to seek solutions to gun violence from all stakeholders, but they will look first to hold gun manufacturers accountable for the safety of their products,” said Colleen Scanlon, the senior vice president and chief advocacy officer of Catholic Health Initiatives, one of the coalition’s member organizations.

Christopher J. Killoy, Ruger’s chief executive, was defiant after the vote, saying that Ruger would not “adopt misguided principles by groups that do not own guns and do not understand guns.”

He added, “It cannot force us to change our business, which is lawful and constitutionally protected.”

Institutional Shareholder Services, an advisory firm, had recommended that investors support the proposal, describing it as a push for “concrete evidence that the board is properly assessing risks to the company’s long-term viability.”

But Brian G. Rafn, a principal at Morgan Dempsey Capital Management who has worked with Ruger’s institutional investors for decades, said that the large funds that are the company’s biggest shareholders might be looking to get out of the gun business. If that happens, there would be “a dramatic sea change” in how Ruger investors vote, he said.

“There is certainly a groundswell on the non-gun side, but people don’t understand that gun usage and ownership is expanding,” he said. “It will be very, very hard to stop that freight train, and the more noise that’s made, the more that will be a catalyst to demand.”

Another activist effort at the meeting was not successful; a bid to block the re-election of Sandra Froman, a Ruger board member since 2015, fell short.

Ms. Froman, a lawyer, served on the N.R.A. board since 1992 and was its president from 2005 to 2007. She helped organize a breakfast at the N.R.A.’s annual meeting in Dallas this month, where President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke.

One of the organizations that backed the effort to block her, Amalgamated Bank, an institutional investor and retail bank that promotes social justice issues, had said Ms. Froman’s close ties to the N.R.A. “may inhibit objective assessment and management of the risks” that Ruger faced.

Ruger, which is based in Southport, Conn., but held its shareholder meeting near one of its factories in Arizona, has contracted with the N.R.A. for some of its promotional and advertising activities and has made over $9 million in payments to the group over the last two years, according to publicfilings. Ms. Froman did not respond to requests for comment.

At the gathering, Mr. Killoy discussed the state of gun industry, saying that it has suffered “some pain” recently. He said that Ruger has been doing better in 2018, after a year that “really saw the market changing and scrambling to adapt.” Still, the company has had to let some employees go and was “down over 700 heads” over the past five quarters, he said.

After the Parkland attack, retailers like Dick’s said they would stop selling AR-15-style rifles — the kind of weapon often used in mass shootings and a type of rifle that Ruger produces. Investors including BlackRock reached out to gun manufacturers for more information on their business practices. And Vista Outdoor, which is one of a handful of investor-owned firearms companies, said it planned to sell its gun-making business.

Ruger has previously faced pressure to open up. In 2016, New York’s public advocate asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to look into allegations that Ruger had misled investors and failed to properly disclose the reputational and liability risks posed by gun crime.

Mr. Rafn said Wednesday’s vote was not the first call for change in the gun industry, but that “there’s a little more intensity now.”

“This is a very, very polarized time,” he said, “with everyone lining up on either side of the fence.”